6 days later, Darius woke up in his tent with a sigh. He rose to his feet and had some servants rush to prepare his bath as well as help him clean himself up.
After doing so, he gussied up and wore a lovely set of a noble's garment that covered his polymer suit which had become like a second skin for him.
He then left the sleeping tent for his 'faction' and approached the mission hall. As it had been for the past few days, the location was crowded with many workers moving in and out, accepting jobs, and checking what was available for them.
Today was definitely more active than most since the last meeting had decided today to be the date of the attack. As such, many workers needed to prepare resources, clean equipment, and assist the combatants in transporting themselves to the battlefield.
Darius had invested an entire 30 gold coins into the mission hall alone over the past seven days, making him glad he managed to get things working quickly because doing this for a long period of time would be impossible.
In truth, hiring normal workers for tasks like these would usually not even take 200 silver for a month, much less a week, in a similar situation. The problem arose because it was filled with Adepts, Journeymen, and Amateurs.
The Amateurs demanded 10 silver for even the simplest jobs and the Journeymen would continue to act like they were in a resort for anything under 500 silver.
As for the Adepts, they took a minimum of 5 gold. Only 3 Adepts had taken jobs at their level since the establishment of the mission hall, yet their contribution had amounted to 50% of the cost!
However, it had been worth it. The first Adept had taken on a reconnaissance task with Mikey and Joneson as his cover. In truth, Darius could have sent the two on their own to get the job done, but these two idiots had a 90% chance to blow their cover.
They had no acting ability and would be outed pretty quickly. With an Adept skilled in stealth helping as well as teaching them along the way, the trio had been able to gain a full report of Marasmus' Necropolis, its structure, powers, and his subordinates.
Darius had freely disseminated this information to all parties here, winning him more goodwill. Of course, the real reason was that the more informed these fellows were, the higher their chances of success.
He could have sold it to the parties to recoup part of his costs, but he had chosen not to for the sake of a positive reputation which he could use to 'spend' on more important stuff later on. After all, the mission hall had 'merely' cost him a day's worth of converting gold coins.
As for any doubts or fears that the information might make the various parties too powerful or create any unseen scenarios, Darius was not worried. On one hand, it was impossible for Marasmus to be beaten by the group here.
He was confident in the Impossible rating, because it had never taken himself alone into consideration, but all his possible actions, the reactions of everyone he might have met, their subsequent reactions, and so on until the end of the one-month period.
If his actions up to his point would secure him a solid victory overall, then the difficulty would at best have been Hard.
Impossible meant that there was logically no chance of Darius succeeding.
Impossible meant that no amount of schemes or plots could bring one safety or success.
Impossible meant that the scenario pertaining to success required 99% luck and 1% effort.
If effort alone - coupled with wits and guile - had been enough, Darius would have survived far more than just measly 56 paths of a bloody 1.2 billion. He shook his head as he thought about this, still overwhelmed by how (ideally) low his chances were.
The second Adept, Kiran, had taken a mission to assassinate a few more Adept undead that had not holed up in the Necropolis. Once again, Mikey and Joneson had tagged along, not so much as to fight but to absorb the Death Energy to increase their power.
After all, Darius estimated that the Bone Dragon should be at the pinnacle of the Adept stage, around level 60. Mikey and Joneson may have better stats than humans, but so too did the dragon, so it was best their levels evened out to reduce as much uncertainty as possible.
As for the final Adept stage expert, Lionel, he took upon himself the task of being Darius' personal 'hand'. Interestingly, the fellow was an Adept not affiliated with any noble house or big faction, so he had no seat in the council.
Darius had used him to sort out many issues that required a more… heavy approach. The mission duration had been set to seven days, meaning that the fellow would be done with his task by tomorrow!
However, it mattered little now. Darius bypassed the mission hall and entered the administrator's tent, seeing Gunner there waiting for him with a bored-looking Lionel.
The fellow was a young man with average features. Coarse brown hair, dry skin, and messy stubble. He was tall at around 6'1 and had drooping eyelids. Despite having a good build, he dressed averagely, and were it not for their current location, it would have been easy to mistake him for a peasant.
Darius greeted the two of them before seating himself. This was exactly where Elijah had sat and suffered under the pressure of managing this camp for almost 10 days, but in these 6 days Darius took over, many things had changed.
Unlike Elijah's reign where his stress had come from the non-cooperation of the various factions, Darius' difficulties only came in the form of pure bureaucracy and administrative pressure.
Still, he had done his job over this period, paid his dues, and had set everything up. As such, today he didn't bother to look at any of the reports and details before him.
He just kicked back and relaxed, waiting for the entire camp to mobilize and move out to the warzone 3 kilometers away.
It was finally time for the climax of this dramatic event to play out.
